The bigger scandal

It comes to something when this blog feels impelled to hand out plaudits to the left-wing Guardian but it deserves some applause for its front page story today which headlines: "Revealed: Brown's £1bn power windfall".

This lifts the lid on the bizarre, arcane and thoroughly disreputable financial arrangements for funding the government's obsession with wind energy – but only in part. More detail comes with a dense comment piece by Oliver Tickell which helps to explain what is going on.

As to the headline issue, the paper is offering us a "scandal" (which has been picked up by other newspapers), to the effect that the government is creaming off payments made to renewable energy providers (mainly wind farms) and absorbing them into the general tax fund. So far, it has taken £585m, another £218m is up for grabs and there is potentially another £200 million available, making up the £1bn which gives the story its headline.

How we get there, however, is a study in complexity which most papers do not even attempt to explain, not least because of that very complexity.

Where is starts, though, is in the dim and distant past when, under the Electricity Act 1989, the government of the day (which, as I recall, happened to be Conservative) imposed a levy on all consumer electricity bills known as the Non-fossil fuel obligation (NFFO). This came at the time of electricity privatisation and was then intended to provide a (highly controversial) subsidy to the nuclear sector.

The basis of this scheme was that it guaranteed a fixed price for electricity supplied by qualifying generators, then above the market rate, to ensure that they could continue in business. The electricity from these generators was taken up by a newly formed quango – the Non-Fossil Purchasing Agency (NFPA) - which sold it on the market for what it could get, making a loss in the process.

This scheme was then extended to include renewables as a measure to kick-start that sector – and the nuclear subsidy was dropped. The NFPA then offered the likes of wind farm operators 15-year electricity supply contracts at a fixed price, to give them guaranteed returns on their investments.

Because, for some time, the actual price paid to the operators was above the market price of electricity, the difference was financed from the fund built up from the NFFO levy – which ran at a loss. But, with regulatory changes and the increasing price of electricity, the NFPA started getting more for the electricity than it had paid for it. Since the NFFO levy was not reduced, the fund thus moved into surplus. It is this surplus which is being creamed off by the government.

However, it has to be stressed that this is a legacy scheme. The last contracts issued under these arrangements will expire in 2018 and the surplus will disappear, reducing over time as contacts come to term.

In the meantime, the NFFO system has been replaced by a new funding scheme, the Renewables Obligation (RO), which works on a completely different basis. The operators are able to sell their electricity on the open market and also get a top-up from the RO levy, based on the amount of money collected, which is handed pro-rata, according to the amount of power produced. Thus, a producer which, say, delivered ten percent of the total renewable energy produced in any given year, would cream off ten percent of the fund.

Going back to the headline issue, the point here is that, had the current arrangements prevailed, the surplus money would not have gone to the government. Instead, it would have been paid out to the existing renewables operators, adding to their already considerable profits. Either way, the electricity consumer would have been stiffed. I am not going to shed any tears about the government getting the money instead of the subsidy wind farmers.

Of course, the levy could have been reduced, but that is not the name of the game. In that sense, it is the levy – the structure of which, we must remind ourselves, was created by the Conservatives – which became a "stealth tax". But then, in the nature of this levy, it was always set to become so in the event that electricity prices increased.

It is deliciously ironic, therefore, that The Guardian should quote Charles Hendry, the Conservative shadow energy minister, accusing the government of using the scheme as a "stealth tax", warning that it would further damage public confidence in environmental measures.

Given that this is a legacy scheme, though, there is a different lesson to be drawn from the affair – one which Tickell does bring out in his piece. It points up the huge profits being made by the renewables industry under the current RO scheme. These, as we pointed out last month are set to cost the consumer as much as £6 billion a year by 2020, offering a staggering £155 billion to operators over the expected life-times of their projects.

This makes the current, time-limited windfall of £1 billion that the government will accumulate mere chicken-feed. The far greater scandal is in the current RO scheme which is a total mess – something which Tickell readily acknowledges. It is distorting investment decisions and driving the industry into making the wrong energy choices, increasing our reliance on gas and making us much more vulnerable to an unstable global energy market.

When it comes to The Guardian, therefore, we can only offer it one cheer for its story. It lifts the lid on a small scandal but has not begun to address the bigger picture – a far bigger scandal which, in the fullness of time is going to create the "perfect storm" of higher energy prices and shortages of supply.

One of these days, the media may begin to address this issue – but don't hold your breath. As for the opposition politicians, it looks like that, by the time they climb down out of la la land, it will be too late. The lights will already be out.

COMMENT THREAD

It begins

If anyone has been thinking that we are exaggerating about the looming energy crisis, read The Times today.

It tells us that, yesterday, "the crumbling state of Britain's electricity network was exposed" when power station breakdowns caused the first energy shortage of the autumn. National Grid was forced to call for more power from electricity generators after a series of unexpected breakdowns left the company with an insufficient safety cushion.

The company requires a safety cushion of between 2,000 and 4,000 megawatts above peak demand. When it fell short yesterday, power suppliers were asked to bring all their available generating capacity online, including expensive oil-fired units.

The problems were caused by a loss of power because of breakdowns over the past two days. Some of the plants that experienced problems included British Energy's Eggborough power station, Drax (pictured) and E.ON's Kingsnorth and Killinghome stations.

Whether it was a coincidence, we do not know, but here in Yorkshire we suffered a short outage – of about half an hour – yesterday. Perhaps it was to put us in training for the events to come.

Neither is that experience unique in recent times. Readers will remember that, on 27 May, tens of thousands of consumers suffered electricity blackouts in what was then described as Britain's worst power shortage for ten years.

There was no immediate risk of major outages yesterday, as the National Grid was able to forecast the problem. But "analysts" were nevertheless expressing concern about the state of the electricity generating infrastructure.

Words like "crumbling" and "inadequate" for 21st-century use have been bandied about and The Times is retailing industry estimates that it will need to spend "£100 billion building a new generation of power stations."

Actually, that is most likely a very serious under-estimate. Our calculations suggest that just the investment needed to meet the EU’s 20 percent renewables quota is likely to cost £100bn, a figure recently endorsed by E.On.

Then there are the costs of replacing the base capacity knocked out by the EU's Large Combustion Plants Directive and the investment needed to bring in new nuclear capacity as Britain's ageing nuclear plants are retired. Add to that the costs of upgrading the National Grid and it is very unlikely that there will be that much change out of £200bn.

Whatever the precise figure, David Porter, chief executive of the Association of Electricity Producers, told The Times: "We are reaching a point where we will have to spend more on infrastructure than has ever been done before in this country."

Putting yesterday's events in perspective, however, it has to be said that Britain's power capacity is generally reduced during the summer for maintenance. Most companies do not return to full generating capacity until after the clocks are turned back an hour in the autumn. This, therefore, exacerbated the problems.

It does affirm, though, that we do have a system on the brink. No end of industry experts have told me that on numerous occasions, the entire Grid has been on the point of collapse and this report simply reaffirms that which we already know.

Meanwhile, yesterday in a speech to the Scottish CBI, Gordon Brown was still prattling about "a low-carbon society", wind energy and his "pilot scheme" for electric cars – which can do nothing other than increase the burden on an already strained supply.

Yet, from the opposition parties, we get nothing.

Oddly enough, former energy secretary (1979-81) David Howell recently wrote to Dr Benny Peiser – publisher of a daily e-mail round-up on energy issues. He says:

The whole scene is now shaping up in just the ways predicted in my book "Out of the Energy Labyrinth." In that book we forecast that energy security would become the prime issue and that the so-called "compelling" message of Al Gore and others about climate change and CO2 would simply be pushed off the screen. Unless policy-makers understood this, we said, they would end up with no long term CO2 reductions, huge short-term energy security problems and a lot of very angry and frightened people.

One is tempted to highlight the words "a lot of very angry and frightened people." The smug, half-witted, terminally complacent political classes do not even begin to realise what is coming. But, when the people find out quite how they have been shafted, they will be very angry indeed.

Then, I will make no attempt whatsoever to resist the temptation to say, "I told you so". I did – many others did – and the political classes weren't listening. They will deserve exactly what they get and I will get a vicious satisfaction from watching it happen.

COMMENT THREAD

Candour from the Beeb

A remarkable programme was aired yesterday on BBC Radio 4, remarkable in the sense that it allowed criticism of the great God wind energy – the totem of the greenie religion.

This was The Investigation with Simon Cox, which can be heard here, with a back-up piece on the BBC website.

Cox actually takes on the "poster boy" for wind power, Denmark, visiting the offshore Horns Rev wind farm – 80 400ft towers with a rated capacity of 160 MW, stuck out five miles into the North Sea.

But, while Cox establishes that wind power produces 20 percent of Danish electricity, he also finds out that this is not actually consumed in Denmark. The figure is a statistical illusion. Only nine percent of the wind energy generated is actually used in Denmark.

At times of peak capacity, the power cannot be absorbed into the grid so it is exported. Much of the power goes a system of inter-connectors, mainly to Norway which has a high proportion of hydro-power and therefore is able to shut down its own capacity very rapidly in order to take the Danish feed.

This, Cox does not actually tell us. Nor does he reveal that the power is sold very cheaply to Norway – which is thus the main beneficiary of the Danish system – or that the Danes have the highest electricity bills in Europe.

But he does elicit from Peter Jorgensen, the vice president of Energinet, the Danish national grid company, that it would be "very difficult to run the system without the inter-connectors." "We are very dependent on our *neighbours", he concedes.

Challenged as to whether Denmark could rely on an independent system, Jorgensen admits that "You could build a system that would balance on it own, but it would be very costly".

That, in fact, is what the UK is committing to. Cox finds that the National Grid has no plans for a system of inter-connectors and, therefore, we will never be able to balance our system with the aid of our neighbours. Thus, Britain will be reliant on back-up power stations for the many days when there is not enough wind

Cox even allows his listeners to hear how much this will cost us, retailing an estimate from E.On of £10bn per year to finance the back-up, adding £400 to the average annual household energy bill.

That brings in Dieter Helm, professor of energy policy at Oxford University, who warns that this back-up will probably have to be gas-fired power stations as these are the easiest to turn off and on. But this will mean a "dash for gas" leaving Britain badly exposed. It would be "about the worst possible thing that one could conceive of given what's going on in Russia and given our dependence on Russian gas supplies", Helm says.

This is, of course, nothing new to EU Referendum readers but the fact that it was the BBC airing these views was very new. And what we have covered is by no means to whole of it. We’ll have a look at the rest in another post.

COMMENT THREAD

A few thoughts ....

.... on the threat Sarah Palin represents to the whole cosy consensus not just in the United States but on this side of the Pond and, especially, in the EU over on BrugesGroupBlog. (Did you really think I would not be able to smuggle the EU into the discussion?)

Out of touch

About the only sour note in the "right wing" press on Sarah Palin's stunning speech comes – entirely predictably – from Charles Clover, the environment correspondent of The Daily Telegraph.

Morosely observing that she attacked Bonto (Barak Obama – Not The One) for "wasting his time turning back the waters and healing the planet", he ruminated that "no one could accuse her of that".

The online version of Clover's piece is headed "Pit-bull Palin, enemy of the greens, could be McCain's Achilles heel", and that says it all. In the eyes of Clover, and the rest of the GWGs (Global Warming Groupies), Palin is a BAD THING because, she not a believer.

Not only that, Palin is a despoiler of the planet, which – in Clover's eyes – means "trouble". "Who said America's isolation on environmental issues would be over with the election", he asks, betraying that ovine tendency of the warmists, their love of "consensus" and their absolute dread of isolation.

What Clover does not realise is that the tide is turning - and Palin is the living embodiment of that change. Look to the dire Spectator Coffee House clog yesterday, picked up independently with glee by Waendel and Purple Scorpion.

They both report that writer Sean Martin trotted out the usual leaden received wisdom on the melting of Arctic ice, intoning that, "The event serves as a prescient reminder to politicians that climate change is an ever burning issue…" - only to be comprehensively trashed by the commenters who piled in on the piece.

Significantly, in yesterday's Telegraph Mary Riddell captured something of that mood, noting:

Citizens want, and deserve, some clarity. Where Americans now have a stark choice between the liberal prospectus of Barack Obama and McCain's hawkish tomorrow, here there is no such distinct alternative. Partly, and thankfully, that's because we are less extreme. We don't burn abortion clinics or field candidates who, in Palin's case, make George W Bush look like Renaissance Man. But it's also because our politicians, huddled on the centre ground, have forgotten the preciousness of difference.

People are actually sick of the cloying "consensus" so beloved of the "colleagues" in Brussels – of the hair-shirt, torfu-spinning, sandal-wearing, planet-saving, eco-friendly preachers. They want some fire, someone who will offer an antidote to the doom and despondency, the sermonising and the dull diet of drivel that dominates the political centre ground.

Everywhere, the heresy is breaking out and the likes of Clover are being left behind.

Palin showed us what real leadership can do and she has electrified the US election campaign. There is a lesson here for Mr Cameron and other British politicians. Like Thatcher, Palin is not going for the centre ground – she is there to "kick ass" and the people love it.

Cameron may think he can win the election simply on the rebound from an increasingly unpopular and dysfunctional Gordon Brown and doubtless he can. But a victory borne on a tidal wave of apathy and loathing of the political classes is no victory at all. He may wear the crown but he will lose the hearts and minds of the people, gaining nothing but the trappings of office which will dribble through his fingers like dry sand into the pile of vacuity that British politics has become.

COMMENT THREAD

This is serious journalism folks!

It is not repeated in the online edition (or perhaps has been subject to a quick stealth edit).

Nevertheless, The Daily Telegraph's transport correspondent, David Millward, writes in the print edition (front page), à propos the Boeing 777 crash at Heathrow:

The AAB said it believed the plane lost power after the flow of fuel dropped shortly before it was due to land. This was thought to be because the supply was impeded by the ice, preventing the reverse thrust needed to slow the plane for a normal landing.

Not only does it not say this in the report, anyone who thinks that reverse thrust is used in flight to slow an aircraft for landing is displaying technical illiteracy of an extraordinary high level. The man is not safe to be let out alone, much less employed as the transport correspondent for a major national newspaper.

Think about it … if that is the calibre of "journalist" the paper employs, can you trust anything it publishes?

COMMENT THREAD

Missing the implications?

In May last, we ran a report on how global cooling had possibly caused the crash of a Boeing 777 at Heathrow in January of this year.

Now, the interim report of the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch has been published, reported widely in the media, including The Guardian, which has produced as good a summary as any.

The official report rules out any idea of the fuel freezing in the tanks, due to the exceptional cold (as was originally postulated), and instead prefers an unprovable theory of ice forming in the fuel lines – a phenomenon which could occur at very much higher temperatures than those to which this aircraft was exposed.

By contrast, in the original report we cited, reference was made to the exceptionally low temperatures encountered, down to -76° Celsius – "the coldest ever experienced" – while the freezing point of the fuel used in the 777 was -57°C (The report records a minimum of -73°C static air temperature).

Strangely enough, in entirely different circumstances, I have had personal experience of the effect of ice while flying. Tooling around North Yorkshire in a Jet Provost one day – as one does – emerging from a high-speed aerobatic manoeuvre, I found that the trim wheel had jammed. Pushing hard to release it, it suddenly freed itself and spun most of the way forward, then locking in position, totally unmovable.

For those unused to the technicalities of flying, the trim wheel is used to balance the controls, allowing it to be flown in level flight with fingertip pressure. The trim nearly fully forward, it now took some considerable physical effort to keep the aircraft in level flight and prevent it plunging to earth.

However, after orbiting the field for some time at low altitude, the trim freed itself and I made an uneventful landing. To my potential embarrassment, though, a minute technical inspection showed up no faults and for a while my CO was deeply suspicious that I had invented the whole incident.

To my rescue came the engineering officer, who surmised that ice must have built up round the trim cable and pulley, jamming it in place, it having become free when the ice had melted at low altitude. That too was unprovable, but entirely plausible, and the incident went no further.

One would hesitate to cast aspersions at the current investigation report, which concludes that "the data indicates (sic) that the fuel did not reach a low enough temperature to cause the fuel to wax during the accident flight." This, however, is at such variance with the original findings we reported, that we could be forgiven for wondering whether "ice" in this case – conveniently melted after the accident, as inconveniently as had mine – gave the investigators the opportunity to play down the effects of extreme cold conditions, which may become the norm and have implications for the whole of commercial aviation.

While the investigators do acknowledge that their findings might have lessons for other aircraft types, it is unarguable that dealing with an ice problem is far easier (and cheaper) than having to address the implications of extremely low temperatures, sufficient to freeze aircraft fuel.

That said, the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch has unparalleled expertise and a world-wide reputation for technical excellence, but their personnel would not be the first to have difficulty coming to terms with the implications of global cooling.

COMMENT THREAD

Blogs away!

In June last my co-editor posted a piece on an EU parliament debate about controlling bloggers.

This immediately brought a response from arch europhiliac Jon Worth - who also published the pic (left) that we have nicked … clearly another example of irresponsible bloggers.

Even though the story was picked up by the stalwart Bruno Waterfield, Worth was having none of it, proclaiming that this was just an EU parliament resolution, with no legislative effect. We could all go back to sleep.

However, the story has resurfaced in Dan Hannan's blog, partly reproduced by Iain Dale, drawing attention to the full report from the EU parliament on its ideas for controlling bloggers.

As before, it proposes "clarifying the status, legal or otherwise, of weblogs". It also want to "encourage" their voluntary labelling according to the professional and financial responsibilities and interests of their authors and publishers, effectively ruling out the idea of the anonymous blog.

What particularly worries the report author, Estonian Socialist MEP Marianne Mikko, is the "undetermined and unindicated status of authors and publishers of weblogs" as this causes "uncertainties regarding impartiality, reliability, source protection, applicability of ethical codes and the assignment of liability in the event of lawsuits."

But there is also more to this report. Buried in the obscure language is a concern "the commercial media has expressed" over "unfair competition" from user-generated content, with a recommendation that the commission and member states "safeguard media pluralism, to ensure that all EU citizens can access free and diversified media in all member states."

Thus sounds suspiciously like a bid to subsidise the ailing MSM which is more willing to carry the EU’s messages, with the commission taking advantage of this to "recommend improvements when needed." The report also "stresses the need to institute monitoring and implementation systems for media pluralism based on reliable and impartial indicators", which stinks of Big Brother - the Orwellian version.

Of course, Jon Worth can still dismiss this as an "own initiative" report with no legislative significance. But it is the case that the commission uses its stooges in the EU parliament to fly kites, and if they get friendly receptions – which they so often do – it then uses them as the justification for proposing legislation.

Certainly, as both we and Bruno Waterfield have reported, the commission hates blogs, holding them – and the internet in general – partly responsible for the success of the "no" campaign in Ireland. The net was also a powerful force in the Dutch and French referendums, and those lessons will not have been lost on the commission.

This report, therefore, can be taken as a ranging shot. Clearly, there is concern within the EU about the power of the internet and the fact that it is beyond the control of the eurocrats. Part of the fight-back, it would seem, will be to subsidise the MSM, in an attempt to level the playing field, but one cannot rule out some attempt at regulation in the fullness of time.

It should go without saying that any such attempt would be fraught with difficulty but that will not deter the commission. Having tried the old adage, "if you can't beat them, join them" – with the fragrant commissioner's tedious blog - it is reverting to type with its own version of the adage: "if you can't join them, beat them".

All we can say is, "Blogs away! – Let battle commence!"

COMMENT THREAD

The enemy within

A little heralded passage in a document published by the Cabinet Office last March set out the stark but unarguable facts:

…the rising priority of energy security will increase the potential for disputes and conflict. Countries including China and Russia are already making control of energy supply a foreign policy priority. Like climate change, competition for energy is a global challenge in its own right, but also one with potentially serious security implications. Along with climate change and water stress, it is one of the biggest potential drivers of the breakdown of the rules-based international system and the re-emergence of major interstate conflict, as well as increasing regional tensions and instability.

This was the report on the National Security Strategy of the United Kingdom, which puts Hutton's comments last week in sharp focus. It also reaffirms the divide between UK and EU policy priorities.

But, while the sides are shaping up for a monumental battle, the "enemy within" is already here, as the warmist king James Hansen attended Maidstone Crown Court yesterday. He was there to give evidence in the case of six Greenpeace members (one pictured) who scaled a 630ft chimney at the Kingsnorth plant in Hoo, Kent, last October in protest against plans to build new coal-fired units there.

The activists had planned to paint the slogan "Gordon Bin It" on the chimney, but only got as far as the Prime Minister's Christian name before they obeyed a High Court injunction ordering them down. They were charged with causing £35,000 of damage – the sum it cost the plant's owner, E.ON, to scrub off the word "Gordon".

Bizarrely, Greenpeace argues that under the Criminal Damage Act 1971, its activists had a "lawful excuse" to cause the damage because they were seeking to prevent even greater damage being caused to property – such as flooding from rising sea levels and damage to species caused by climate change.

The intervention from Hansen supported this view, when he declared that Britain had a responsibility to take a lead on limiting climate change because it was responsible – owing to its long industrial past – for much of the CO2 already in the atmosphere. Phasing out coal-burning power stations was crucial in tackling global warming. "If we are to avoid disintegration of the ice sheets, minimise species extinction and halt or reverse... climate change there is just time to accomplish it, but it requires an immediate moratorium on new coal-fired power plants that do not capture or sequester CO2," he told the court.

Viewed in isolation, this is just one battle over one coal-fired station but the fact that we see Hansen taking the extraordinary step of jetting over from the States – never mind the carbon footprint – to give evidence in a provincial UK court gives the clue to its international dimension.

Already, in the United States, there is a concerted campaign by the greenies to demonise coal to the extent that the achieve a de facto ban, one which is gaining momentum by the day. According to this report some months ago, in early 2007, the US Department of Energy had listed 151 coal-fired power plants in the planning stages and talked about a resurgence in coal-fired electricity.

But during 2007, 59 proposed US coal-fired power plants were either refused licenses by state governments or quietly abandoned. In addition to the 59 plants that were dropped, close to 50 more coal plants are being contested in the courts, and the remaining plants will likely be challenged as they reach the permitting stage.

Since then we have seen the depredations of the Massachusetts v. EPA case which has led to even more coal fired stations being refused permits, to the extent that coal-fired electricity generation is fast becoming untenable.

Even last month, we saw the major US utility company Xcel taking the "unusual" step of "voluntarily" shutting down two coal-fired power plants in Colorado, citing benefits to public health and concerns about carbon-dioxide emissions.

A central figure in the battle to demonise coal in the US has been none other than James Hansen and it is therefore no coincidence that we should see him over here, broadening the front in his determination to see western democracies abandon coal as an energy provider.

The overall strategy, of course, is to force governments into a position where they have no alternatives but to rely on renewables for electricity generation, with the greenies entirely unconcerned by simple fact that they cannot even begin to provide a reliable base load.

Instead, they come up with madder and madder schemes, the latest being the utterly insane idea of developing an "offshore network" to link all the subsidy wind farms in the North Sea, so that a dip in wind power generation in one area could be "balanced" by higher production in another area, even hundreds of kilometres away – at a cost of a mere €15-20 billion.

In promulgating their madness, they do of course have the complete support of our government in Brussels, the brooding presence of which has largely stifled debate in this country. The fact of the EU involvement has undoubtedly inspired the Conservatives, in pursuit of the broader policy of not discussing "Europe", to keep quiet on this vital area of national interest.

How refreshing it is, therefore, to see the selection of Sarah Palin as Republican vice-president candidate energise the debate in the UK, to the extent that Reuters is reporting that she has made "energy security" her top priority, catapulting the issue to the top of the election agenda.

Thus it was that delegates at the Republican National Convention this week got a laminated card listing their party's principles. The top item, ahead of the economy, national security and fiscal accountability was: "energy independence and lower gas prices."

It says a great deal for British politics and the dead hand of the EU that energy security and the whole of our energy policy has played such a small part in national political discourse, the whole debate consigned to the margins. But, it is the lack of such open debate that is allowing the enemy within, bolstered by its fatuous arguments on "climate change" and wholly supported by the EU, to do its deadly work.

Sooner of later, the political classes and the chatterati are going to have to wake up to what is going on, and engage in what without doubt is the major political issue of our time – as indeed the US is so clearly demonstrating. The time for prattling is already long past and we desperately need to see some grown-up discussion and real action.

COMMENT THREAD

A confrontation shapes up

The news agency Reuters is recording a "top EU bureaucrat" telling a meeting at the Royal United Services Institute that climate change represents such a threat to global security it must be at the heart of European Union foreign policy, much as energy security is now.

This is Helga Schmid, director of the policy unit of the European Council, expressing her views, which included a statement that, "Climate change has to move to centre stage of thinking about foreign policy."

To our understanding, energy security has never been at the heart of EU foreign policy. Schmid actually concedes this, remarking that it has only become "part of foreign policy dialogue," even if it is, "a fundamental foreign policy and security issue."

The more substantive point, however, is that any move to put "climate change" at the top of the foreign policy agenda – above energy security – puts the EU in direct conflict with the UK, if Hutton's words are to be taken seriously. To an extent, it also cuts across the British addendum to the European Council communiqué published last Monday.

As importantly, Schmid's comments reaffirm the premier place of "climate change" in the EU’s hierarchy of concerns, placing energy security as a subordinate issue – something we noted last month.

The problem is that energy security does not fit easily as a subordinate to climate change. In fact, the policy requirements for each are mutually contradictory.

And, after speaking with one of the country's leading energy experts yesterday, tied in with our own research, the scale of the problem comes clear.

Central to this is that renewable energy – and in particular wind farms – will not be able to fill the looming energy gap. Even if they could provide the notional capacity, the actual output is so low and unpredictable that a hundred percent thermal back-up would be required. Thus, reliance on wind energy would actually increase our dependence on imported fossil fuels. It will reduce our energy security and massively increase costs, with the very real prospect that supplies will not be available when needed.

Given that wind energy is virtually a recipe for power cuts, it is generally recognised that the only option which can stave them off is investment in a rapid nuclear power plant building programme. Virtually the only capacity that could be brought on-line quickly is the pebble bed system.

Because of the market distortions introduced by the Renewable Obligation Certificate (ROC), though, energy investment is focused almost entirely on wind power. The subsidy payments make wind the most profitable short-term option for power generators so that is where they are putting their money.

To incentivise the rapid production of nuclear plants, two things must happen. Firstly, the government must promise a stable regulatory environment, where investors can be assured that the rules for nuclear plants will not be changed within the investment cycle. Secondly, to promote the development of new systems – such as pebble bed – the industry must be offered a financial incentive at least equivalent to that offered to the renewables sector. Without that, the industry will not invest in nuclear.

However, under EU rules, direct subsidy to a resurgent nuclear industry is not possible. But so, it seems, would be an extension of the ROC. According to BERR, the ROC system comes within the state aid rules, there being a waiver for renewables which allows them to be subsidised.

Already, the nuclear industry is in trouble over clean-up arrangements and an attempt to extend any sort of government sponsored subsidy to the industry would almost certainly be treated as illegal state aid.

The only way this could change, at an EU level, is if the commission – with the agreement of the member states – decided to put energy security at the head of the list of priorities, above climate change. Taking the cue from Helga Schmid, this seems extremely unlikely.

Thus, the UK government is in an impossible position. If it conforms with EU policy imperatives and keeps climate change on top of the agenda there will, within a matter of years, be an "energy crunch". The lights will go out. The only way that can be avoided is if the government decides, as a very clear and measured policy decision, to reject EU rules and contravene its provisions on state aid.

This sets the stage for a massive and unavoidable confrontation between the British government and the EU. If this current government ducks the confrontation, then it will be visited on the successor government – presumably led by Mr Cameron – which will have the added urgency of power cuts being that much closer.

Altogether, the conflict between the EU's obsession with climate change and the national interest of the UK, in needing to maintain continuous and affordable energy supplies, looks like it could become the defining issue in our relationship with the EU. And, when the people – to say nothing of their elected representatives – are forced to choose between membership and keeping the lights on, it is not difficult to predict where sentiment will lie.

COMMENT THREAD

King maker or pretender?

Declan Ganley was in Brussels yesterday, ostensibly addressing SOS Democracy, the cross party group of MEPs in the EU parliament, chaired by Dan Hannan.

He took an amount of flak from a gaggle of Irish journalists and europhiac MEPs who had evidently conspired beforehand to give the man a hard time but, apparently, brushed off the hostility with ease. The Irish Times thus struggled to make a big deal of the meeting.

What is more interesting is the number of side meetings which Ganley conducted while he was in Brussels, where he is also opening an office to co-ordinate his response to the euro-elections. One such was a long lunch with Farage and colleagues, the latest of several meetings with UKIP MEPs, at which former MEP Jens Peter Bonde has been present.

At the top of the agenda has been Ganley’s plan to field up to 400 candidates at the euros, with UKIP wishing to convince the leader of the Irish think-tank Libertas not to stand against UKIP contenders.

However, Ganley is also being assiduously courted by the Tories, with whom he has a greater philosophical affinity – being broadly in favour of the European Union and imbued with the same fantasy that, if only the organisation could be "reformed", everything in the garden would be rosy.

Whether Ganley stands for office (if you can call it that) is very much in the balance. He told the SOS Democracy meeting that he was reluctant to run as a candidate "because he doesn't feel like a natural politician". And he is also – apparently – undecided on whether to launch Libertas as a political party to fight in the elections. He does not anticipate making a final decision before January 2009, which is leaving it rather late if he wants to get a multi-national election team up and running.

That leaves it open as to whether Ganley is to take on the role of kingmaker or pretender. In the latter, he would be up against the combined weight of all the existing eurosceptic and "euro-hesitant" parties, fighting for his share of the vote and open to the criticism that he was splitting the vote and weakening the established parties.

In the alternative role as "king maker", the endorsement of Ganley – widely seen as the architect of the Irish referendum victory – could be a powerful boost to those who gain his favours.

Despite UKIP's advances, Ganley seems more likely to favour the Tories. As Dan Hannan points out in his blog, Declan is "an insistent pro-European" and has little in common with the party. He also tends to the view – somewhat reinforced by Jens Peter – that UKIP is a busted flush.

Interestingly, this was almost precisely the view expressed recently on the other side of the divide, by no less than Alexander Stubb Finland's foreign minister. Interviewed by the Irish Times he professed himself to be "unconcerned" by the prospect of Ganley fielding candidates, seeing parallels with UKIP. "No matter how slick and brilliant Nigel Farage is, the party has become a complete footnote with no influence," he said.

Certainly, UKIP is going through yet another round of its interminable infighting, lovingly recounted by Iain Dale, which is about to leak into the regional press.

If the Tories able to put their weight behind opposition to the constiutional Lisbon treaty and are also able to attract Ganley's endorsement, the premier anti-EU party may not only find itself outflanked and marginalised at the euro-elections, but also crippled by the burden of adverse publicity.

It is probably not an exaggeration, though, to suggest that Ganley could prove a decisive factor, and it will take more than a good lunch with Farage to turn him round.

COMMENT THREAD

By their propaganda shall ye know them

A short letter in The Daily Telegraph today, on the polar icecaps, makes more sense than the acres of guff promulgated by the warmist groupies on the paper's staff.

The letter, from John Marshall of Tetford, Lincolnshire, refers to a report in the paper a few days ago. This retailed the alarmist view from Prof Mark Serreze, a "sea ice specialist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC)" that the current ice meltback images suggested the Arctic may have entered a "death spiral" caused by global warming.

Writes Marshall, "This alarmist rhetoric is unjustified. Satellite records, which are used to show ice cover, only go back 30 years: a very short time in polar history." He adds: "Roald Amundsen sailed the Northwest Passage in 1903 and saw no ice. Therefore the ice would have been the same area as today's, or less," then informing us that, "The current melting is due to a slight change in warm ocean currents, not climate change."

In one of our posts, we referred to a report in November 1922, where "fishermen, seal hunters and explorers" were finding "radical change in climatic conditions" in the August of that year. One expedition established a record by sailing as far north as 81° 29’ in ice-free water.

In other words, there is nothing at all new or particularly unusual about extreme meltbacks in the Arctic and such conditions have hitherto been entirely unrelated to global climatic changes.

That much is effectively endorsed in a piece in the invaluable Watts up with that which cross-links to a report by NASA. This recorded an "ongoing reversal in Arctic Ocean circulation triggered by atmospheric circulation changes that vary on decade-long time scales." These results, according to NASA, suggested "not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming."

That the warmists are so ready to enlist what may be short-term cyclical changes to their cause speaks volumes for their misuse of data and their evangelistic approach to science. That newspapers like the Telegraph so uncritically retail their alarmist doctrines also speaks volumes as to their loss of objectivity and their shallow approach to science reporting.

In the letters column today, Mr Marshall has issued a valuable corrective but, of course, it will not make one blind bit of difference to the torrent of propaganda emanating from the warmists. But, with the BBC in full flow today, by their propaganda shall ye know them.

COMMENT THREAD

Two articles from over the Pond

Though the American media and blogosphere on the left seems to be taken up with dishing dirt - some relevant, most not so - about Sarah Barracuda, with the occasional irruption of fingernail-gnawing comments of what an utterly bad choice she was and how this will give the Dems the election, other matters do turn up as well, though mostly on the other side of the spectrum.

Oh, before I leave the subject of Governor Palin, here is an interesting reading of the situation by the highly regarded "maverick" blogger Spengler.

On to what really matters and that is what to do about Russia (and if there is one politician who knows about that country, it is the Governor of Alaska). John O'Sullivan produces a jeu d'esprit in the New York Post in which he envisages that famous 3 a.m. phone call for President Obama but as he says the situation would be much the same for President McCain, though he is unlikely to be quite so wimpish. Also, I don't think President Obama will make Hillary Clinton his Secretary of State. But as to what the Europeans might do if there is another crisis, the description is fairly accurate.

"Maybe the Germans can lean on them," mused the president, remembering his warm reception in Berlin.

"Germany won't agree to using force without a UN resolution. It's a constitutional thing with them," chimed in the secretary of state.

"I'm not talking force, Hillary," replied the president. "That's Bush-think. No, we have to respond with diplomacy and, as a last resort, sanctions."

"Maybe the Germans can impose oil and gas sanctions on Russia," said Mrs. Clinton sweetly. "Sit in the dark and warm themselves by burning the money they've saved until the Kremlin crumbles."

"Well, there's a united Europe today," replied the president, brightening. "Sanctions by the whole European Union would worry the Russians. Aren't they a possibility?"

"We'll know for sure in two weeks, sir, when the European Summit meets to discuss the crisis. But the signs aren't good. Poland and the Baltic states want a strong response, but they lack the clout of Germany and France. I'd say a moderately worded rebuke to Moscow is the best we can hope for."

Mr O'Sullivan's conclusion is entirely predictable and is obviously correct, since it is completely in line with what this blog has been saying for some time.

Multilateral forces can work only if there is a clear agreement of what the purpose is and who provides those forces. The European Union, on the other hand, without managing to provide an alternative by way of power, soft or hard, has an entirely negative effect on Western ability to deal with crises:

If the next US president wants effective multilateralism, he must re-establish NATO as the sole supplier of European security. Otherwise, when the phone rings, he'll have one rival to call instead of 25 allies.

There is, presumably, the possibility of re-creating NATO in a completely different form, which would leave out a number of West European countries.

One of the editorials in today's Wall Street Journal is also on the EU's inability to deal with the situation created by President Medvedev's refusal to live up to any of the agreements, supposedly sealed, signed and delviered by President Sarkozy, whose country holds the rotating presidency.

"Stop! Or we'll say stop again!" just about sums up the outcome of Monday's grand summit, whether it is the comedian Robin Williams's line or not.

We are glad to see that the newspaper is not falling for Sarkozy's bully tactics with which he tries to masquerade his own incompetence:

Mr. Sarkozy also insisted that his efforts to reach a cease-fire had borne fruit. The Georgians might disagree. Russia has used the agreement's vague language to justify a continued presence in Georgia far beyond the original conflict zone. The cease-fire called for international talks about the separatist regions, but that didn't stop Mr. Medvedev from recognizing their independence.

The most cynical comment of the day was Mr. Sarkozy's attempt to use the conflict to bully the Irish over their rejection of the EU's Lisbon Treaty in June. "This crisis has shown that Europe needs to have strong and stable institutions" like those it would have gotten under Lisbon, Mr. Sarkozy said.

No, what Europe needs is political will. Rather than scolding Irish voters, Mr. Sarkozy would do better to name and shame those member states whose desire to curry favor with Moscow keeps the EU from taking a firmer stand.

The one problem is that the Wall Street Journal still considers that Europe and the European Union are one and the same, thus assuming that "Europe" can have such a thing as political will.

A breath of sanity

Last week we reported on the remarkable story of the planning application for the subsidy wind farm at Lower Farm, Bearstone, Shropshire.

Despite it attracting objections from 2,333 residents and businesses, six Parish Councils, two MPs and the neighbouring Newcastle under Lyne Borough Council – which refused permission for the access road - planning officials had decided that national policy was sufficient to over-ride local objections and recommended that the scheme should go ahead.

Last night, however, in front of 400 local residents, in a packed hall set out for 250, North Shropshire Planning and Development Committee, decided to go with local sentiment and refused the application by a clear majority of 11-3.

However, the developers, Dutch-owned Nuon (from the land of the burning windmill – pictured), are planning to appeal and, from past experience, it is likely that the government appointed planning inspector will approve the scheme, citing the essential need to increase the amount of renewable energy.

MP for North Shropshire, Owen Paterson, who has been at the forefront of the campaign against these seven giant 340 ft, 2MW wind turbines, had a suggestion for Nuon – to the effect that they should find a large cold stone and hide under it. The people of Shropshire do not want these windmills and no amount of corporate spin will make them change their minds.

But, with £43 million of subsidy at stake, it is easy to see why Nuon are so enthusiastic about wind. This is easy, secure money, gained from ripping off customers through the so-called Renewables Obligation Certificate (ROC) levy, without which wind power would be economically unviable.

And that, at the heart of it, is what windmills are all about – money. Government policy, with the backing of the EU, has turned these useless eyesores into giant money-making machines and the corporates are now digging deep into the trough to grab their shares of the booty.

Still there are enough stupid people out there – and an awful lot of politicians – who are naïve enough to believe otherwise. But, for once, democracy and common sense have prevailed. But, such is this land of ours that it will very soon be cast aside. The windmills must prevail – for no other reason than money talks.

COMMENT THREAD

The wise and all-seeing leader

The late unlamented (by most people) Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was during his lifetime often describedthe world's greatest leader as well as being completely omniscient. Every now and then he would leave the cares of state and his never-ceasing watch over the people behind and would unbend his mind to put scientists or linguists or agricultural experts right about whatever it was they were wrong about. Woe betide anyone who ignored the great sage's guidance.

Even Stalin was not quite as hands-on as the former President, now Prime Minister, Putin appears to be. They do seem to have one thing in common – an ability to get the western media all excited by their activity. The Russian media has little choice.

The story that has convulsed the MSM a couple of days ago was that of Vladimir Putin and the Siberian tiger. I need not spend too much time on the actual story as it was written up everywhere but the pictures are worth looking at and one or two questions do arise.

The account in the Sydney Morning Herald is as good as any other.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has tried to boost his macho image by shooting tranquilisers at a Siberian tiger.

Putin, dressed in combat fatigues, was with a team of wildlife researchers in the Ussuri reserve in Russia's far east when the tiger escaped its harness and headed towards a television crew.

Armed with a tranquiliser gun, Putin shot at the tiger, which soon slumped to the ground.

Amazing. There was nobody better qualified there to deal with the escaped tiger either before or after it had been shot with a tranquilizer gun? I mean, do they all need careful instructions on how to deal with the problem? That is certainly the impression one gets from the second photograph where the omniscient one appears to be instructing someone else on the best way to deal with the stunned tigress.

Apparently, the tranquilizer worked immediately. Sheesh! That's superior Russian technology for you. How long does something like that take normally? About 20 minutes, I have been told.

The Aussies seem a little sceptical as one reads the story.

It seems that not a summer goes by without some macho image of the former President, now Prime Minister appearing in the media. In this he has long outstripped Stalin and his henchmen as well as his successors who usually preferred to appear in jolly poses, perhaps post-hunting but with children and happy friends and family members. Our Vlad does not seem to like that. When did we last see him with his family, just enjoying himself, not throwing judo opponents over his shoulder or riding bare-chested with a knife stuck in his belt or brandishing a tranquilizer gun?

Why on earth was he wearing combat fatigues anyway? Is this all part of the message he is trying to convey to the Russian people: the country is constantly at war with its neighbours, all of whom are her enemies and are merely thinking of invading as soon as possible?

Meanwhile, there is trouble in Ingushetiya. (That's next door to Chechnya in north Caucasus.)

The owner of the embattled opposition web site Ingushetiya.ru was killed Sunday after being detained by police, and his supporters promised massive protests that could lead to a sharp escalation in violence in the restive region.

Magomed Yevloyev, a prominent opposition member and staunch critic of Ingush President Murat Zyazikov, was detained in Ingushetia's main city of Nazran as he stepped off a plane from Moscow, his lawyer and friend Kaloi Akhilgov said by telephone.

The police maintain it was an accident that happened while Yevloyev tried to wrestle an assault rifle away from a police officer in the police car. In the process he was accidentally shot in the head. I am a little surprised they did not go for the suicide explanation.

Other people give different accounts:

Ingush opposition activist Magomed Khazbiyev said Yevloyev was found lying near a Nazran hospital with a bullet in his temple, Interfax reported.

He died during an operation at the hospital, said Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the Investigative Committee in the Prosecutor General's Office. The Investigative Committee has opened an investigation into the death that might lead to charges being filed against the local police, Markin said, Interfax reported.

As they say, you pays your money and you takes your choice.

The protest that had started during Mr Yevloyev's funeral was broken up by baton-wielding police though the police are denying that as well.

President Medvedev, meanwhile, possibly to show that he is as tough as his predecessor, now Prime Minister, has announced that President Saakashvili is a "political corpse" and should, presumably, be given a decent burial. Whatever one may think of President Saakashvili and his ability to withstand Russian provocation, the fact remains that he was elected by the people of Georgia. Therefore, despite the many Western comments about him being the wrong person in that position because the Kremlin does not like it, the fact remains that Georgia is no longer a Russian colony.

Needless to say, the whole mess is America's fault (but President Prime Minister Putin will solve it all with his tranquilizer gun) and there was praise for the European Union, which refused to impose sanctions, though did suspend talks on a strategic pact until Russia withdraws her troops from Georgia. Apparently there have been suggestions that those troops will be withdrawn. We have, I believe, been here before.

The BBC Russian Service reports that Georgia has broken off diplomatic relations with Russia and employees of the Russian embassy will be leaving Tbilisi. There is also a brief report that Vice-President Cheney is about to visit Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine.

Turkey has been complaining that there are delays for its goods at Russian border crossings, a move that is seen as a "punishment" because the country has dared to allow "US warships carrying aid to Georgia to pass through the Turkish straits, which connect the Mediterranean to the Black Sea" and is thinking about retaliatory gestures.

Not so, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who is visiting Istanbul.

This is not an action directed against Turkey; Turkey is not being singled out. There can be no politics involved in trade.

Of course not. And the best person to subdue an escaped tigress is a country's President Prime Minister.

A "changing media landscape"

The EU commission is bitching about the Irish media becoming "more eurosceptic" and "more tabloid" in its reporting in the years between the second Nice Treaty referendum and the Lisbon campaign.

According to the Irish Times, it warns that Ireland's "changing media landscape" between 2002 and 2008 has implications for public opinion about the European Union.

Complaining that RTÉ's broadcasting dominance has been hit by satellite broadcasters – which have increased their audience by nearly 10 percent since the 2002 Nice referendum – the commission also observes that the "news content on the main commercial national station TV3 is of quite low quality."

"There is a shift away from the State news radio and TV stations," it adds, loftily declaring that this means the "quality of debate has suffered," i.e., that the party line is no longer followed so readily.

The commission is also worried that British "Eurosceptic" newspapers have become more influential in the Republic. "Since 2002 we have seen an increase in UK titles with "Irishised" editorial," it says. Forty-one per cent of all Irish people read one or more of the following; the Irish Sun, Irish News of the World, Sunday Times, People, Irish Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. "These have proven to be significant opinion formers which in general have been more Euro-hostile," the commission notes.

No such critique would be complete without a tilt at the Rupert Murdoch-led media group News International. This, complains the commission, has increased its hold over the tabloid and Sunday paper market. Its editorial "is highly critical of the European Union and even more so of the Lisbon Treaty."

Although these papers are printed in Ireland and more of its editorial content is produced by Irish journalists on Irish issues, it is – horror of horrors – "subject to the London editorial line."

The commission singles out the Irish Sun, which has 309,000 mostly young male readers. It, says the commission, has "taken a campaigning Europhobic stance in line" with its sister title in the United Kingdom.

Worse still though is the influence of the upmarket Sunday Times. It is read "by 363,000 middle-class, well-educated readers, who would traditionally have been European supporters." Now, "not only has the editorial been largely critical of Europe, it is rumoured that it has been refusing contributions from staff that are pro-Europe"

The launch of the Irish Mail on Sunday and Irish Daily Mail have also affected Irish opinions on the EU since they "have run intense Eurosceptic campaigns and employ a variety of right-wing journalists. These target primarily middle-class, middle-aged females, who tend to be a demographic that is widely more 'Euro-hesitant'."

Hilariously, the commission regards "of less importance" the Irish Daily Mirror and the People. Both titles are owned by the UK Trinity group and, declares the commission, "their commentary has been fairly balanced."

There is also the growth in reproduction of foreign news in indigenous Irish titles like the Irish Examiner, Irish Times and Irish Independent. Sneakily, the Irish Independent takes much of its European news from the Daily Telegraph. "Despite being the largest national daily title, it no longer has a Brussels-based journalist.

The main reason for this is the cost-cutting that many of the indigenous Irish titles underwent in the early part of the decade. Both the Irish Times and Independent reduced editorial staff numbers. This has created a dependency on outsourcing reporting to UK titles."

To add to the commission's woes, the development of a conservative religious press since the second Nice Treaty is a particular problem. "These titles have an even more conservative viewpoint than the Church hierarchy on many issues. They are bitterly anti-European, supposedly because of liberal European attitudes on; church/State relations, homosexuality, abortion, stem cell research and various other social issues."

The commission also has complaints about the "new media". The fragmented anti-Lisbon Treaty campaign had a much stronger internet presence, it notes, using viral e-mails, videos and songs.

"Apart from official websites, the internet has largely been a space left to anti-European feeling. Given the ability to reach an audience at a much lower cost, and given the simplicity of the 'no' campaign messages, it has proven to be easily malleable during the campaign and pre-campaign period."

Clearly, the commission is rattled about the media coverage it is getting and, despite huge expenditure in this area, has not yet come to terms with the internet. Not for once though does it show any signs of examining its own message choosing instead to shoot the messenger.

COMMENT THREAD

The "hockey stick" lives (not)!

It is hard to think of a scientific fraud that has been more comprehensively debunked than the infamous Mann "hockey stick", not least in the admirable summary written by Bishop Hill and, latterly, in the Booker column.

In a sane world, when the progenitor of the self-same icon of warmist theology pops up again – for the umpteenth time and says: "Hey chaps! I was right all along, and my latest work proves it," you might expect a certain amount of jaundiced scepticism.

But this is not a sane world.

Thus, when Michael Mann delivers his latest attempt to prove his "hockey stick", cheer-leaders such as Richard Black, Environment correspondent for the BBC News website, roll over, wave their legs in the air and utter admiring gurgles, offering the immortal phrase: "A new study by climate scientists behind the controversial 1998 'hockey stick' graph suggests their earlier analysis was broadly correct."

Black clearly has neither the wit nor integrity to postulate that a so-called scientist who is already a three-time loser is not going to get it right on his fourth attempt and that, in pursuit of his mystic goal of proving that the world is warmer now than it has ever been – at least, in the last 1300 years – that he might be a tad biased.

Not that Black is alone of course. The warmist groupies on The Daily Telegraph are quick to follow in the wake of the Beeb, pronouncing: "Past decade hottest for 1300 years in northern hemisphere", trotting out the unexpurgated doctrine of the sainted Mann, who sits at the right hand of Gore.

For the moment, however, coverage is relatively modest but the Christian Science Monitor offers a taste of things to come with its comments section. The first commentor tells us:

The team led by Mann has lost all credibility. They (sic) way they have deliberately obfuscated errors in their results, refused to disclose their methods, publish their data and kept on pushing flawed analysis makes anything they publish highly suspect. That their latest publication confirms their earlier results is neither surprising or informative. It is just a continuation of their standard behaviour.

…while the second offers:

This has to be an April Fool's Day gag, right? Michael Mann's original hockey stick made him such a laughing stock in the eyes of the world, it's hard to believe any scientific body worth its salt would keep him on the payroll. He has been thoroughly discredited, why would anyone believe a word he says?

One blogger, quick off the mark, heads his piece, "Climate fraudster Michael Mann resurfaces", while another notes: "This is bound to send the Warmists into a frenzy".

It is, of course, going to take some time to deconstruct the Mann paper, but it is worth noting that climatologists have difficulty deciding even today what is the current temperature. That Mann is so unequivocally able to assert what the temperature was 1300 years ago tells us all we need to know.

But then, as we have so often observed, we are not dealing with science here, so much as a belief system. Those who want to believe will continue to believe, while the rest of us stand back in amazement and marvel at the gullibility of the human species – or some of it.

COMMENT THREAD

The unholy trinity

One of the "colleagues" wittering away on the BBC World Tonight programme – I think it was Solana – was at pains to reassure his audience that the Russian energy weapon was not an issue. We need Russia, he said, but Russia also needs us to buy its energy.

That is true, but only up to a point. As Putin has been at pains to point out recently, there are other customers apart from Europe and, if the EU took too strident a line, he could "diversify" Russia's oil and gas export markets.

Then there is the beneficial effect - to Russia - of instability. The prospect of shortages induced by shutting off the taps is bound to send oil and gas prices soaring, which means that Putin and his merry men could quite happily rake in the petrodollars selling very much less for more.

All in all, therefore, even if we could rely on Russia to act logically (by Western definitions) we cannot necessarily rely on our supplier-customer relationship to assure a reliable flow of coal, gas and oil.

EU rhetoric aside, that is undoubtedly the driving force behind the dismally weak performance of the "colleagues" at the Extraordinary European Council meeting yesterday. Almost literally, Russia has Europe over a barrel and the "colleagues" know it. A "paper tiger", as The Times puts it, is the mildest of epithets.

What is not being said often enough though is that the EU's weakness is largely a self-inflicted wound. Separately and collectively, the individual member states have failed to secure reliable energy supplies or coherent energy policies, thus putting themselves in the thrall of Russia.

And, of course, the reason there is no coherence is that energy policy has – as we have pointed out before – been subordinated to the greenie agenda, dominated by the fantasy of reducing carbon dioxide emissions and seasoned by their abhorrence of nuclear power.

In this, we have allowed a situation to develop where we have an unholy trinity of three separate policies – energy, "environment" and foreign policy – which have become hopelessly intertwined, dereliction in the first two engendering impotence in the third.

To deal with Russia, as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes yesterday, there is no need to confront the Kremlin in the Caucasus or on the Dnieper. All we need to do is to chip away at its energy wealth. If we can drive oil back down to $70 a barrel, and keep it there, Russia will be reduced to a middling power of 141m people, with a deformed industry, in the grip of an acute demographic decline. It will no longer be a threat.

But, to do that, we need to sort out our energy policy and, for that, we need to break free from the tyranny of the greenie agenda. We need, as John Hutton said recently to put Britain's ability to generate its own energy needs above climate change in Government's priorities.

Clearly, that message has got through as, at the behest of Britain, the Council communiqué included a reference to energy policy, stating:

Recent events illustrate the need for Europe to intensify its efforts with regard to the security of energy supplies. The European Council invites the Council, in cooperation with the Commission, to examine initiatives to be taken to this end, in particular as regards diversification of energy sources and supply routes.

As far as diversification goes, there is only one sensible and realistic option – nuclear energy on a grand scale. Speaking recently to a nuclear energy expert, he advocated the rapid development of pebble bed technology on a scale sufficient not just for base load but to provide our entire peak electricity supply.

During off-peak periods, he then argued, surplus energy should be used for underground coal gasification, producing gas for domestic use and, potentially, vehicle fuel.

With intelligent use of technologies such as anaerobic digestion and careful husbandry of our remaining North Sea oil supplies, there is no reason why the UK could not be energy efficient for decades to come – apart from supplies of uranium (and possibly thorium), which are available from friendly, stable democracies.

As it stands, however, if we continue to allow the dominance of the greenie agenda and the interlinkage of the unholy trinity, not only do we suffer from the lights going out – at enormous expense as we indulge in the fantasy of windmills – but we remain impotent on the world stage. Greenery is no longer an option – not that it ever was. It is now an indulgence we simply cannot afford.

COMMENT THREAD

Got it in one … almost

"What is the point of the EU summit and a Georgian fudge?" asks Bruno Waterfield.

"What is the point of an EU foreign policy that can reconcile British and east European calls for tough "sanctions" against Russia (even it is all just talk) with the conciliatory approach of France, Germany and Italy?" his text then runs.

If he had deleted all after "EU…" he would have had a better title. But, after dismissing the EU as "mouth and no trousers", his piece would effectively say the same thing. What is the point of an EU?

COMMENT THREAD

The consequences of meddling

It seemed so easy – nip in and force mobile phone companies to cut their fees and, hey presto! You have a "Europe of results" and everybody will love you.

As it turns out, it ain't that simple. Start interfering with the complex workings of the mobile market and you get all sorts of unintended consequences. That much comes over with crystal clarity from the reaction of Vodafone - one of Europe's largest providers – to the latest meddling by the commission.

As recorded by the Financial Times and the BBC, Vodaphone is vented its anger at Viviane Reding by making the “extraordinary claim” that 40m Europeans could be forced to ditch their mobile phones, all because the EU wants to be loved.

The current battle is about so-called "mobile termination rates", industry jargon for the charges mobile operators impose on each other, together with fixed-line phone companies, for connecting calls to their wireless networks.

These wholesale charges represent between 15 and 20 percent of operators' revenues, and have been an important means of recovering costs. But now, after its "success" with roaming charges, Reding wants these charges cut.

Vodafone's response is that, if they are cut, retail charges will have to be raised to compensate for the losses, pointing out a rather simple truth that seems to have evaded the commission, like: "Failure to recover costs risks bankruptcy."

At stake is a completely re-shaped charging system, adopting a US-style system whereby mobile users pay to receive calls as well as making them. Reding thinks this is a good idea because users there – reputedly - pay lower call charges and make greater use of their mobiles.

On the back of lower termination charges, Vodafone argues that operators will have no option but to raise retail charges for European customers, also warning that the impact of increased charges would be felt by less well-off customers who have cheap pay-as-you-go deals with operators rather than the more expensive monthly contracts.

This is because Vodafone says most of its revenue from pay-as-you-go customers is derived from them receiving incoming calls, which attract termination rates. These customers make relatively few outgoing calls.

On this basis, a survey by the market research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres, commissioned by Vodafone finds that about 10 percent of Europe's mobile phone users – estimated at 40 million - would ditch their mobiles, rather defeating the object of Reding’s latest initiative.

Whatever the outcome, this one looks like running and running, the only certainty being that, by the time the commission has finished meddling, the mobile phone industry will be in about as good a shape as the Common Fisheries Policy.

COMMENT THREAD

The elephant strikes again

The fragile housing market faces a fresh setback in the autumn, reports The Telegraph yesterday.

New regulations, we are told, could force tens of thousands of sellers to take their homes off the market when, from October, it will be illegal to sell homes without an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC).

Now, this we all know to be an EU requirement based on Directive 2002/91/EC - all of us, it would seem, except The Telegraph.

According to this paper, the EPC is merely "a piece of paperwork introduced as part of the Government's controversial Home Information Pack (HIP) scheme." No mention of the EU, no mention of a directive – just "a piece of paperwork".

As to the current problem, the paper tells us that, since HIPs were introduced last December it has been a legal requirement for all sellers to obtain one, but the requirement did not apply to sellers whose homes were already on the market. Now, it appears, the Department for Communities and Local Government has warned that homes already on the market must be withdrawn from sale in October unless their sellers obtain EPCs.

With the large number of unsold houses on the market, due to the weak state of the property market, many sellers are now going to be hit once more with the cost of providing certificates.

Since they are being put to this cost and great inconvenience, you would have thought that the paper could inform us of the source of this new law. But that is not for us to know, it seems.

However, there is all the more reason for knowing what is going on as the implementation of the EU directive includes more than an element of gold plating.

Under Article 7 of the Directive, member states are required to ensure that, "when buildings are constructed, sold or rented out, an energy performance certificate is made available to the owner or by the owner to the prospective buyer or tenant, as the case might be."

This, according to one of our readers, is interpreted in France a requirement to provide a certificate just before the equivalent of completion of the contract. The purchaser has a right to renegotiate or rescind the contract if the reports are significantly negative.

In the UK, though, the requirement is imposed before the property is offered for sale – something the Directive does not demand. And further – something for the future – the Directive requires only that the certificate be renewed every ten years so there is no need for a new certificate each time a property is sold.

None of this we ever get from the MSM which drone on in their dreary way, with cheap, ill-informed journalism which simply fills space. No wonder the elephant survives and is in such rude health.

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